NC Supreme Court Says District Must Be Redrawn

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NC Supreme Court Says District Must Be Redrawn

Special Report - August 30, 2007
The North Carolina Supreme Court handed down a decision last Friday that could cause multiple legislative districts in North Carolina to be redrawn after the 2008 election. In an opinion filed on August 24, the state’s high court found that N.C. House District 18, which straddles Pender and New Hanover counties, was improperly drawn to favor a minority candidate. Incidentally, State Rep. Thomas Wright (D-New Hanover), who currently represents House District 18, is under investigation by the State Board of Elections and the Wake County District Attorney for alleged campaign and other improprieties.

In simple terms, the question before the court in this case, Pender County v. Bartlett, was whether the General Assembly appropriately applied the federal Voting Rights Act to this area of Pender County and neighboring New Hanover County. If the minority makeup of House District 18 was “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district” the area would qualify for special designation under the Voting Rights Act, and the legislative district would have to be drawn to favor the election of a minority candidate. If, however, the Voting Rights Act was not applicable, provisions in the N.C. Constitution that prohibit as much as possible the General Assembly from dividing counties when drawing state legislative district maps (collectively referred to as the “Whole County Provision”) would apply. In the latter situation, House District 18 and adjoining House districts would have to be redrawn to minimize the division of the counties in question, likely requiring all of Pender County to be contained in a single House district instead of being divided between two districts. Presently, both Rep. Wright and Rep. Carolyn Justice (R-Pender) represent a portion of Pender County and a portion of New Hanover County. The population of Pender County was 41,082, according to the 2000 census, while the size of an ideal State House district is 67,078.

In this decision, the court determined that House District 18, which contains an African-American population of 42.89 percent and an African-American voting age population of 39.36 percent, should not have been designated as a Voting Rights Act district, because the African-American minority group in the district “does not constitute a numerical majority of citizens of voting age.” Consequently, the court found that House District 18 must be redrawn in order to comply—not with the Voting Rights Act—but with the Whole County Provision of the North Carolina Constitution.

The Supreme Court was careful to leave the composition of this new House District 18 and other affected districts to the control and design of the State Legislature, but it was very clear in directing that “all redistricting plans for the North Carolina House of Representatives and North Carolina Senate comply with the principal holding of this case: in order for a minority group to… be ‘sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single member district’…it must constitute a numerical majority of citizens of voting age.” It is unclear at this point if other State House or State Senate districts in North Carolina will be impacted by this ruling.